Over 550 Civilians Killed So Far in Saudi War on Yemen

The latest figures on Saudi Arabia’s nearly month-long war on Yemen show a majority of the slain continue to be innocent bystanders, with an estimated 551 civilians killed in the attacks.

The Saudi government has repeatedly contested reports of civilian deaths, but with some of its highest profile strikes including a refugee camp full of civilians and blowing up a Yemeni military missile base and the surrounding residential neighborhood, it’s perhaps unsurprising how high the civilian toll is.

The latest figures from UNICEF also showed at least 115 children killed in the past month, though only about half of these deaths were from the Saudi strikes, with the rest being deaths from assorted battles between the Saudi-backed Hadi forces and the Houthis.

The death tolls were a big part of Saudi Arabia announcing the “end” of its operations earlier this week, though they began a “new” military operation against Yemen just hours later, and have conducted scores of airstrikes since then, suggesting the name, not the policy, is what really changed.